


a bridge of many-colored leaves

by Esmenet



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Family, Gen, POV Female Character, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-22
Updated: 2010-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmenet/pseuds/Esmenet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happiness is difficult to find, but it's not so hard as all that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a bridge of many-colored leaves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinaed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/gifts).



> Written for [fma_ladyfest](http://community.livejournal.com/fma_ladyfest).

Where others see buildings, Gracia sees angles and textures and lines; where they think _that looks nice_ she thinks _those roofs were the height of style in Ishbal three hundred years ago, and those windows are straight out of old Xing watercolours._ A leftover from her previous career, the one she left because nobody needed new and glamourous buildings anymore, because the government was nosing around to recruit alchemists from its current payroll, because of many other reasons.

Maybe she’ll try it again sometime, when Elicia’s a little older.

  
When Riza wants to teach Elicia about guns, Gracia says yes. Guns are dangerous, you can easily kill someone with them even when you don’t mean to, and that’s a really, really good reason to learn how not to.

She watches Riza’s calm face and Elicia’s little, careful hands, and the way she listens to Riza with her whole body, leaning in and looking close. She watches as Riza Hawkeye shows her daughter how to hold a gun, and how not to hold a gun, and how to brace herself for recoil.

She watches the sun glint off their hair, two different shades of gold.

  
“Oh god, I thought you were _joking_ ,” Roy says in faint horror.

“Not at all!” Gracia says, smiling brightly and nudging the stack of books a little closer. It wobbles. “Riza and Ed had to help me find some of them, and Ling Yao was kind enough to personally translate a few of the old Xingian essays on democracy -- those are the folders, by the way, and please don’t set your coffee on them, Al had to smuggle them out of the country and I’m not sure we could convince him to do it again--”

“ _Out_ of the country?” he interrupts, with a sort of morbid curiosity. Amestris is usually the strictest about what gets past its borders; half the time Xing just doesn’t seem to care.

“The emperor’s advisors wanted to keep the originals for his tomb.”

“Ah.” For a lack of anything else to say, he peeks at the first book on the very tall stack. It’s big and shiny and titled _Overthrowing Military Dictatorships And You._

While he’s not looking, Gracia quietly borrows one of the Xingian essays. It will make nice bedtime reading for Elicia.

  
(She’d once threatened Roy that if he didn’t get moving faster on his plot to take over the country, she would get there first.

She’d been joking, of course, but it would have been kind of fun.)

  
Gracia doesn’t know why so many people seem to think she doesn’t like Roy Mustang. She’s known him for years and years and they haven’t killed each other yet; she likes him fine. Just . . . not necessarially in a way that’s conductive to his continued good health, is all.

Maes and Riza and Edward have always approved of this attitude, though she suspects Riza only approves because she secretly thinks it’s funny.

(It’s _really_ funny, as she learns when she finally gets to see Roy and Major General Armstrong in the same room for a long period of time.)

  
Winry arrives at Elicia’s sixth birthday party halfway through the afternoon, a wrench stuck in her hair and fanning herself with an automail catalogue. It’s unseasonably hot and she’s tired and late, but those are not the kind of things you worry about when you’ve got a happy birthday girl attatched to one leg, so Winry hugs her and smiles so hard her face starts to hurt. She hasn’t been back in months, and while this will never quite be home it’s damn close.

Gracia hugs her and Elicia both at once, then hands her a glass of iced tea and lets Elicia introduce Winry to her friends. Winry doesn’t remember most of their names very well, but she gives them an in-depth explanation of how legs work (complete with illustrations), which scores her some disgust, some points, and a piece of delicious birthday cake.

Of course, she is immediately shown up by ex-Colonal Roy Mustang -- whose current rank she can never remember, so she calls him “Mr Mustang” to other people and nothing at all to his face -- who shows them an alchemical circle that changes a clod of dirt into a tiny explosion, but at least she got some cake out of it. (Gracia quietly moves the cake back into the kitchen when she sees Roy drawing up that particular circle, and resolves to have a Talk with him later about teaching young children dangerous things. Not everyone is the Elric brothers or her lovely daughter, after all.)

Then they braid daisy-chains and play tag and lie around in the grass for a while, even ex-Colonal Mustang, until it’s dinnertime and the kids have to go home. Some of the adults do as well, but Riza Hawkeye and Jean Havoc and Roy Mustang and Winry herself stay. They cook and talk of little things -- national policy and alchemical research and automail and architecture and Elicia’s school -- and keep talking as they eat. The heat of the afternoon drains away into a cool evening where everyone is glad of warm food, and Winry is a bit sad when it’s time to leave.

Not that Gracia lets her.

  
Sometimes she wonders if they should go traveling. Elicia would love it; they could meet all the people she’s heard about, all the General Armstrongs and Emperor Lings and Lan Fans of the world, and eat new foods and read new books and watch the world turn and change around them.

But friends are here, Elicia’s and her own, and their presence binds them tightly to where and who they are. Someday those ties might loosen, and they could fly away free like birds into the wide wide open spaces of the world and come back when they care to. Or if they care to. That would be wonderful.

 _But today,_ Gracia thinks as she knocks on Winry’s door to wake her for breakfast, _today is also wonderful._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a translation of Kokinshuu #175:
> 
> the weaver maiden  
> longs for autumn's coming  
> it is because a bridge  
> of many colored leaves will  
> span the river of heaven


End file.
